Virilneus’ GS4 Idea Book

As mentioned in this post I would like to see Curse changed to be verb based and then have 716 and 713 rolled into it as those two spells are just novelty attack spells and more or less match all the other curses in power.

This would free up 713 and 716 for different attack spells. Presently there is a gap in the sorcerer profession, we have low level attack spells that work fairly universally, we have DC, which is expensive and only really works on magical critters… with mana (on magical critters with no mana… often 2nd/third casts etc, it works for crap), and then FI, which is also mana intensive, risky to use to many areas, has many immune creatures, and of course leaves no treasure a large portion of the time.

What we miss is a mid-range attack spell that does damage on non-magical beasties, as well as a nice AS based spell.

713/716: Major Disruption, is a perfect solution. It more or less would look like the empath spell Wither but with slightly less power. Where the empath spell Wither is more or less a souped up version of 705, this spell would be a souped up version of 702 with multiple damage rolls on each cast. Also, like with my 702 proposal this spell would be modified by mana controls to increase damage possibilities.

Credit to Herod for coming up with this idea.

713/716: Essence Ball. The other option for these spell slots is a multi-fuction AS based attack spell of reasonable power (13 mana spell slot = good powered bolt spell, 16 mana spell slot = better bolt). Long ago I proposed a spell call psychic bolt that would hit the target with a ball of darkess, cause damage, and cause status ailments at the same time based on subsequent CS rolls (very much like empathic assault). I went through multiple iterations of this idea but the one I think I liked the most is the one where the target was afflicted with a random curse, or on really bad hits multiple random curses. So, you would have damage probably similar to 111, with maybe critters without souls and undead having a partial immunity, there would be splashes, like with other ball spells, with the splash targets being damaged, but also a small chance of being hit by a curse, then the main target would always be hit by atleast 1 random curse (shorter duration than a normal curse though, like how web-bolt gives shorter duration webs).

Damage (and splashes) would be increased by mana controls in aggregate.

I’ve already posted about making curse verb based but what about doing more with it, what if when a curse was self-cast on the sorcerer it gave them the opposite of the penalty? See, the sorcerer circle has but 1 buff in the entire circle, which is last among all spell circles in the game (except maybe the old 800 circle, which no profession has anymore). But how to add another one? I like this idea…

Instead of making you clumsy, self-casting the clumsy curse would give you a small +5 rank bonus to climbing (note, climbing potions are sold for cheap at like every merchant event now). Or protection from knockdown manuevers.

Instead of making you itchy, self-casting the fleas curse would give you… well I can’t think of a good one for this. The main problem with fleas is you drop your gear, so I thought maybe a bonus against disarm, or a bonus to strength, or to CM. I don’t know, maybe something else entirely. Maybe protection against distraction attacks.

Instead of giving you disease (remember, we’re going to make disease a curse), you gain an immunity to disease.

Instead of giving you a DS penalty, you get a DS increase (small in comparison to the penalty).

Instead of giving you an AS penalty, you get an AS bonus (small in comparison to the penalty).

Instead of giving you a TD penalty, you get a TD bonus (probably about the same, its only 15).

Instead of giving you a Nightmare (remember, we’re making nightmare a curse), you get resistance to fear based attacks (like what bravery gets you).

So, what are the tradeoffs? Well, a sorcerer can only choose 1 curse to wear at a time, it should have a decent duration though, refreshable, but not stackable. Like 1130 in duration I think. So it isn’t like you could wear all those buffs, just one, and obviously this would all be self cast only.

The other trade off is, based on mana controls and sorcerer spells known, there is a chance of failure every time you cast the spell, and if you fail you get the negative, not the positive, curse effect instead. This chance can be trained away, not unlike the chance to train away armor hinderance etc, but there will always be a minimum failure rate.

712 is a great spell, but is the only buff in the sorcerer base list so it takes on a lot of duties. One thing the sorcerer base list lacks is an AS buff, which puts us behind other professions in the bolt AS department. This does indeed matter. Unlike with CS/TD where every critter has a TD tuned specifically to each individual sphere, each critter has only 1 AS, so having a significantly lower AS than other pures does result in a much more difficult time using AS based spells

 True, we can always use scrolls and imbeddables, and for years I’ve been using 211, 215, and 513, on every hunt, but not every sorcerer has the resources I have, but having a small AS buff in our circle is strongly desired.

 Or… we could always add a buff component to curse.

As with Mana Disruption disintegrate is not modified by lores and this makes it lag behind out attack spells at higher levels, as well as go against what appears to be the design goal if GS4 in that all spells are modified by lore in one way or another.

I think, if anything, disintegrate should be modified by necromancy, it isn’t a perfect fit, but it is a fit. The other option would be to use mana controls (an aggregate sum).

Many do not remember slate wands, but they had really interesting messaging. They would shoot a laser-like dull grey beam at the target and vaporize off strips of flesh. The crit messaging was fantastic, but the damage was erratic.

Still, it very much seemed like an aimed attack, despite being CS based, and I always thought it could be resurrected as an AS based attack.

How to do this though without ruining the CS based attack? The new web, 118, gave the answer.

What if disintegrate cast from offensive stance became an AS based attack such as with web?

I would keep the laser-like messaging from the old slate wands for the AS based attack, and which would make one infer that the way to increase damage with the spell would not to be to shoot a wider beam, but rather to hold the beam on the target for longer. Every millisecond the beam is on the target would result in more damage.

So, I would change the CS version of the spell to be modified by necromancy or mana controls for an increase in power. The degree of which would be decided by GMs as per balance.

For the AS version I would park the initial damage factor akin to wizard’s airbolt or a little stronger. Then, I would not have the lore modify the damage at all, but rather have lore (or mana control) training result in a longer lasting beam, which for game purposes translates to multiple damage rolls of varying strengths.

I would still like for sorcerers to receive a stronger AS based attack spell in a higher spell slot, but I think changing 705 to be dual purpose would do a lot to provide for flexibility and diversity within the profession.

One problem with sorcery is that our core attack spells are not modified by lore or anything else, so that by higher levels they lag behind other casting professions severely in the damage department.

 However, as seen with recent changes to empath attack spells, apparently it is now an accepted practice to use mana controls, rather than lores, as spell damage modifiers, and mana controls fit our spells very very well.

 So I would suggest that a sorcerer’s total many control ranks (not averaged out) be used to modify the damage of 702 like lore modifies the damage of so many other attack spells (such as 1106 or 302) I would also be very willing to accept an optional additional mana cost in the form of an infusion (like 302) to justify increased power. I would like this to be optional and controllable so that lower level sorcerers are not forced into higher mana casts if they do not want to be.

Now, I am not sure how creatures work, but if creatures are branded with spheres in that a GM could say “This creature has elemental mana, that creature has spiritual mana” etc, then perhaps the mana control used in the formula could be based on the mana possessed by the target.  I’m not sure if it is possible to do that with the backend, only a GM could say for sure, but it would add more depth to the spell if it were possible.

 The degree to which the mana controls should increase damage would be fully up for discussion and ultimately end up at point which the GMs think is fair and balanced, the important thing is that the spell gets updated to use something to use some mangler skill to modify possible damage, like more or less every other attack spell in the game.

Much like how trolls receive an extra damage roll from fire, flying creatures should receive an extra damage roll when knocked to the ground. Plummeting to the earth’s surface still causes damage right? Let them feel it.

Simple request, short post.

It was said that when Empaths were given the MnM spell circle Empathic Dispel would be evaluated in regards to what spells it can affect.

With Warden’s statement that Empaths are now to be considered full mental/spiritual hybrids despite not having the MnM circle, this would seem to be the right time to do this review.

Empathic Dispel is a Mental/Spiritual spell that affects the following spheres:

• Mental/Spiritual
• Mental
• Spiritual
• Spiritual/Elemental

Which sphere is missing? Mental/Elemental of course, AKA Bard spells.

Bards are mental/elemental hybrid semis, empaths are mental/spiritual hybrid pures, sorcerers are elemental/spiritual hybrid pures. Why is it that Empathic Dispel affects the 700 circle but not the 1000 circle?

Personally, I do not think it should affect either, it is already powerful enough and a half on half match shouldn’t be enough to justify it not working. So I would ask that 700 circle spells be made immune to 1140. If not, then for consistency sake the 1000 circle needs to also be affected by 1140, anything else reeks of bias.

I would like to see some more web, and I think the 100 circle could use a mass attack spell to balance 410/435 in the 400 circle, so, cone of web was an easy idea to think up.

I would structure this basically like Cone of Lightning, but being about twice the mana it wouldn’t be exactly the same. It would function like CoL in that it would individually target all critters in the room for a web bolt (based on stance, so if in a forward stance, bolt, if not, weaker area wave — just like with 118). However, if you can visualize all of those webs leaving the caster, quite a bit of webbing would drop on the ground, and so because it both makes sense and would justify the higher mana cost, I would also have the spell create an area web in the room in addition to the individual targeting of all the critters.

As for training requirements, I would support a requirement of MOC training very similar to how ball spell splashing works where MOC training is used to establish the minimum targets and lore training is used to establish the maximum targets.

708 is a great and useful spell, but it has a rather abrupt upward limit. You target a creature with it and can break and amputate their limb, and then nothing. Roll a 150 or a 400, the affect is the same.

I would propose that for every 50 points of warding failure, starting at 200, another limb is blown off. So that, if you have a 300 endroll, all 4 limbs are blown off.  This is merely for fun, since it is unlikely that you’d ever get so high of an endroll while normally hunting.

There is a neighborhood in the landing with a swimming hole. After swimming in this hole a script attaches to players and for some time afterwards makes water drip down off their clothing.

Well, losing 4 limbs at once is quite bloody I’m sure. Wouldn’t it be sorcerish if all that blood covered everyone in the room and then spent some time dripping off their clothing? The color of the blood could of course change based on the creature that was limb disrupted, and those without blood wouldn’t result in this.

Then, of course, standard torso mechanics should come into being and the body should follow any possible down directions in the room.

Maelstrom really needs an update. The messaging in game is not at all accurate as per the description in the official docs.

In the game messaging indicates the storm is of an elemental nature, causing many sorcerers to ask that elemental lore increase the damage of the spell. However, if you read the official documentation, the maelstrom is not supposed to be elemental at all.

At the very least, the messaging needs to be looked at.

Now, I do not think we need any lore to be able to increase the potency of the spell, we can already do that, by repeatedly casting maelstrom at the same creature. However, I do think that it would be worthwhile to let mana control skills modify the mana cost for those repeatedly cast maelstroms.

Additionally, based on some magical skill, I like Evarin’s SHIFT idea. Whereby, once a target is dead, the maelstrom does not dissipate, it continues spinning and can be SHIFTed onto another target. This would not be a duration increase, merely it no longer ties duration to target life. If a player can cast a 2 minute maelstrom, let it last a whole 2 minutes, not only until the first target dies. If they kill one critter with it but it still has juice left, let them SHIFT it to another target. Have it require a skill check against spell aiming or something, and put in 5 seconds of RT, but let it happen.